


lateral force

by stelgibson



Series: universe of msr [3]
Category: The X-Files
Genre: Angst, F/M, More like after never again, Nature, Never again, more like natural disaster
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-24
Updated: 2020-09-24
Packaged: 2021-03-07 20:54:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 709
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26633923
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stelgibson/pseuds/stelgibson
Summary: “he is the lateral force that knocks her over”an insight into a post never again scully.
Relationships: Fox Mulder/Dana Scully
Series: universe of msr [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1909534
Comments: 2
Kudos: 15





	lateral force

**Author's Note:**

> angsty insight into scully sometime after never again. hope i did justice to our fav fbi agent.

She doesn’t have a favorite flower but knows his coffee preference. She can’t remember the last day she had to just herself, but remembers the light on his face when he breathes her in. She doesn’t want to know what every star in space is named; she just wants to feel his warmth as they lay on the floor and look up at the night sky together. She wants to rest in him, in his embrace. She wants her heart rate to stabilize in his arms. She wants to memorize the sigh that leaves his lips when she kisses the space below his ear. She wants him there: for her, by her, in her, with her. 

She’s tough, she’s relentless always, but especially when it’s important. She is strong enough to carry herself through the pain, strong enough to keep her steely exterior. She tries to remind herself that the real strength comes in vulnerability, in the alert to others when something is wrong, when something doesn’t feel right. But she pushes that thought far far away, behind the walls she spent years constructing, with precision and care and a lack of foresight that one day, they would need to come down. She forgot to include instructions on how to demolish the walls, so she sits trapped by her own doing.

Mulder is the power, the force that shakes her to her core. His beliefs send her into a whirlwind, his will strong, too strong. Mulder is the not so gentle breeze, the kind of earthquake you hear before you feel, the kind that rattles the cups out of the cupboards, the books off the bookshelves. He is the lateral force that knocks her over, making the ground unstable and shaky under her feet. He leaves her worldview in ruins, an unsettling silence after he’s passed through, quicker than time, leaving her to process, alone. He’s the kind of disaster that sets unsuspecting towns ablaze. He’s the fire that burns her from the inside out, leaving a trail behind, charred and lit anew and with a need to be rebuilt again. 

At first, she’s infatuated, she’s struck by his charm and his smile. She fools him with her raised eyebrows and her sighs. Years of his recklessness, of his silence at the wrong times, of his need to know know know the truth, and she breaks down, no words. She can barely admit to herself what’s wrong, until one day it’s clear. Clearer than glass, clearer than the nagging feeling she gets in her gut in the dark, clearer than the instinct to raise her gun at the sight of lives being threatened, clearer than than the sting of the needle leaving its mark on her forever.

And the anger that lives in her starts at the base of her spine. It’s subdued, at first. But slowly it builds, standing waist deep in the ocean, wave after wave, crashing over her, fiery red hair now dark and face dripping salt.

He just doesn’t get it. He just doesn’t understand. She chooses every single day to show up over and over again, to do the work, to run through the rain and the mud and the rain. He thinks it’s about him: her work ethic, her consistency, her decisions. He’s a fool.

Sometimes she so desperately needs to bury herself into his chest, to take away the pain, to tape back her crushed heart, but she forgets that he is the root of the problem, the seeds sowed into the ground, nurtured over time. Between years of running in the forests and the cities and the hospitals. From the red to the black to the white to the green rental car, used plane tickets piled in a shoebox, cheap motel coffee ingrained in their blood. The way she catches him before he falls, the way he sees her mind at work. Riding their bikes in tandem, never a flat tire on the dusty road of life, the wind whipping by. 

But it takes much of her strength to stand up, to step away, to walk through the very door that started it all, the first breath, the first sight, and realize that the only constant in her world is herself.

**Author's Note:**

> thanks for reading for real for real !!! lmk what u think!


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